Ryder Kedar
|born=2533 |died= |species= |gender=Male |height=6'9" (206 cm) |weight=92kg |hair=Brown |eyes=Blue |cyber= |allegiance= : : |branch= , :Pinion Team |unit= |rank= |mos= |specialty= |battles= |status= }} A child prodigy, a patriot and an idealist, Ryder Nergüi Kedar was a man born in the wrong time. Born during the beginnings of the , Kedar managed to escape many of the War's repercussions since his homeworld of New Carthage was never discovered by the . Growing up with a family, an education and many commodities that few had at the time, Kedar's status as a prodigy led to many social and academic accomplishments early in life. However, the young man set these aside at the age of sixteen to serve humanity in the , flying through officer school and then rising to the rank of Lieutenant before being recruited by . Operating as a tactical supervisor under the moniker Codename: VENTURE, Kedar was soon enough reassigned to , where he once again distinguished himself among the recruits with his tactical mind and intuition. Biography A Gentleman and a Scholar Born in 2533 to high class parents on the Inner Colony of , Ryder Kedar - or Kedar as he preferred - managed to escape the suffering that wracked the majority of human space during the Human-Covenant War. Sent through private school and personally tutored from a young age in music, arts and literature, Kedar's parents Sulaiman and Elisa groomed him from birth to be a sophisticated, influential member of New Carthage's cosmopolitan class. Training their child in the hopes that he would one day take over Sulaiman's banking empire, the realization that Kedar was a prodigy filled them with pride and joy. The first signs of Kedar's intellect came when he was seven years old, having managed to achieve an uncanny mastery of piano, violin and clarinet. Outclassing his modest teacher within a year, Kedar's mother soon found out from his school teachers that the young boy's grasps on other subjects were far outpacing the other students as well, putting a strain on his relationships with them. It was here that Elisa first imparted Kedar with a lesson that would start to shape his future. Continually pushing Kedar to achieve more and telling him he could accomplish anything, the boy managed to make leaps and bounds in his learning over the next few years. By the age of ten, Kedar had become fluent in Spanish, Russian, Arabic and Chinese - alongside his native English - and by thirteen he had graduated from his high school. A few months later in the fall of 2546, Kedar entered college at the prestigious Meriweather Institute of Learning and Arts, and quickly rose to positions of authority within the student body through his persistence and vast array of skills and knowledge. Becoming part of social circles mostly due to other student's desire to be close to power, Kedar spent the next three years working on a double major in Engineering and Economics; in his spare time, he managed to publish an academic paper, learn four more languages, and assist professors in the writing of textbooks for sociology, mathematics and literature. Graduating at the end of 2549 with summa cum laude, Kedar seemed set to become one of the top business moguls of New Carthage. However, despite his family's beliefs, fate took a different turn for the young genius. After hearing that one of his few, intimate friends had died in the Covenant invasion of , Kedar became very troubled about his place in the galaxy. So troubled, in fact, that after discussing with several counselors, the entrepreneur-to-be visited a military recruiter: spurred to action and a sense of vengeance, Kedar enrolled in a one way trip to officer school at the . Though his family felt very apprehensive about this decision - feeling Kedar's future would be much better off if he continued to focus on studies and business - they nonetheless wished him the best of luck and once again encouraged him to be the best at what he did. At Earth's Service Arriving on shortly after , Kedar found himself in a much different world. With the students at the school composing the best that the UNSC had to offer from a wide array of backgrounds, the young, sheltered man was initially taken aback. However, quickly adapting, Kedar took to this studies with the same fervent effort he applied to all his previous endeavors: pouring himself into the academics with the ease his intellect had always granted him, Kedar found his main challenge to be physical training. Having never participated in sports throughout his school years - seeing them as a "frivolous waste of time" and unnecessary for his future career plan - Kedar found himself woefully outpaced by his fellow trainees, and began forcing himself to take steps above and beyond the standard regimen to train himself faster. More than once, Kedar found himself mentally and physically exhausted by the strain he placed himself under. Despite numerous medical concerns over his health, Kedar continued to push himself, graduating ahead of schedule in early 2551 with top honors. Immediately assigned to a destroyer, the UNSC Johannesburg, post-graduation due to the rapid depletion of naval officers in the war, Kedar entrenched himself in his new position as communications officer, distinguishing himself in his post throughout the year. Though not a particularly endearing personality among the crew, Kedar's skills were second to none, something that most of his shipmates readily acknowledged - and those that did not were promptly lectured by Kedar on all the ways he benefited the ship. After engaging in a few small yet notable skirmishes with scout vessels over Bastion III and Te Fiti, Johannesburg entered its first major engagement at the Defense of Concord in April of 2551. Stationed on the planet for repairs and resupplying, Ryder picked up the fleet wide alert of incoming Covenant ships as slipspace monitoring stations at the edge of the system picked up the first signs. Informing Captain Heinrich Martin, they immediately moved into position and engaged alongside the rest of the UNSC's substantial fleet force in orbit. Kedar proved invaluable, relaying communications and decrypting enemy messages at a substantial pace. When at last the battle came to a costly end in the UNSC's favor, Kedar was commended highly for his efforts. While psyche evaluations at the Lunar Academy had made a note of Kedar's over-inflated self-worth, by fall of 2551 this personality trait reached its peak. Engaging the Covenant over Meridian alongside other UNSC craft, a plasma lance from one of the enemy starships struck a critical blow to Johannesburg and the ship it was escorting, UNSC Hilda, damaging Johannesburg's bridge and killing Martin in an explosion. Kedar, ever on alert, had managed to pinpoint an opening in the Covenant's attack pattern, and calculated that Johannesburg could eliminate one of the enemy starships with carefully executed maneuvering by using the heavily damaged Hilda for cover. The ship's XO, Gianna Iordanou, refused to sacrifice the sailors left aboard Hilda, causing Kedar to protest the objections to his plan vehemently, to the point of Iordanou calling in the ship's security team to escort him to the brig to be detained. He never made it there, as despite Commander Iordanou's best efforts Johannesburg was struck again, forcing all the crew to abandon ship. In the aftermath of the UNSC's Pyrrhic victory, Kedar found himself under arrest for insubordination, leaving him restrained to a small wing of a UNSC space station orbiting Concord's moon. Initially attempting to protest what he viewed as an unfair imprisonment, first verbally then by refusing to eat, this came to an end after five days when Kedar was transferred to the brig of the UNSC SeekctLegend of the Galactic Heroes Admiral for transport to a facility where a court martial would later be held. But luckily for the Naval officer, the starship never made it to its original destination. Exiting slipspace above the planet of Tian for a brief stop on its journey, the Seekct found itself hopping into the middle of a Covenant invasion. Falling in with the battlegroup, the captain of the Seekct engaged Covenant forces, but the battle turned sour quickly, with the ship taking several hits. While the Seekct was not damaged bad enough to leave the fight, explosions killed numerous crew members throughout the ship, forcing all hands on deck - confusion in this order placed Kedar on the bridge crew, assisting in logistics and communications. Regardless of the efforts of the Seekt's crew and the rest of the UNSC ships, the battle was soon lost, leading to the retreat of seven surviving human starships. Kedar's court martial was not forgotten, however, and he was nearly arrested and brigged yet again as the Seekct fled through safer slipspace routes. The arrest stopped before it began though, all thanks to the presence of Lieutenant Wolfgang Mittermeyer.Legend of the Galactic Heroes Admiral Kedar impressed Mittermeyer with his tactical knowledge and cool under pressure during the Tian engagement, and pulled several strings to have Kedar released and transferred to Mittermeyer's personal command. Disembarking upon the Seekct's arrival at Reach, Kedar was subjected to several days of paperwork and debriefings, and soon found himself in the employ of the Office of Naval Intelligence. Deep in ONI's Shadows In dire need of new agents with their critical loss due to the War, Lieutenant Mittermeyer had prospected several potential recruits on his trips between star systems while fulfilling other objectives. The meeting with Kedar aboard the Seekct, however, was mere happenstance. Earning his Spartan Wings Chance encounter Personality References